


Politics

by NevillesGran



Series: Storm King AU [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Mind Control, Minor Violence, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:17:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4015996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scene of revelation and confrontation between two former friends in a laboratory deep beneath Sturmhalten Castle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Politics

**Author's Note:**

> Um, remember that time I came up with an alternate-timeline AU (http://tanoraqui.tumblr.com/post/115770399977/tanoraqui-iztarshi-tanoraqui-iztarshi-yeah) at like three in the morning? I've been mulling over this scene for a while.

Gil wasn’t surprised to find that Tarvek hadn’t told the Wulfenbach forces about every secret laboratory in Sturmhalten Castle. A little disappointed, but not remotely surprised. Gil had known since age eight that Sturmvoraus was a consummate sneak, and the more the whole mad conspiracy with the Other and the Knights of Jove came into the open, the clearer it became that sneakiness had been a key survival trait for the would-be Storm King.

Of course, ambition was much less of a survival trait in that family, and if only Tarvek had lacked that, he could have told the Baron about the conspiracy in his basement _years_  ago and saved everyone a great deal of…well, technically very little, Gil supposed, in terms of time and energy spent rounding up the Geisterdamen, dismantling hive engines, and discovering and curing enough subtly wasped Europans to give anyone nightmares of what could have been had the Geisters found their “Holy Child.” Gil was skeptical of that myth, but he knew his father had never stopped thinking about that girl in Beetlesburg six months ago.

Dozens of female sparks would have lived if Tarvek had exposed his father’s plans when he was at school on Castle Wulfenbach, and the entire town of Passholdt. Gil didn’t intend to let him forget that.

So Gil was doing some sneaking of his own, through the back hallways of Sturmhalten Castle nearly three hours after midnight. He’d been at it for an hour and a half and was considering going back to his guest bedroom when a loose candlestick moved a couple flagstones in the floor, revealing a booby-trapped ladder down to a booby-trapped tunnel leading to a really _expertly_ booby-trapped laboratory. It took Gil over half an hour to dodge or disable them all, and he didn’t think he’d moved more than twenty meters all together.

The lab held wasps.

Most of them were dead, dissected of floating in solution or, in a peculiarly peaceful tableau, piled in a food bowl in the cage of a slumbering wasp-eater. The weasel’s quiet snuffles easily drowned out the subliminal buzz of the live wasps in the glass box directly across the room.

The weasel was demonstrating remarkable self-control, but its bowl must have been filled too recently for this lab to belong to the incarcerated Prince Aaronev, much less Princess Anevka. No one outside the immediate family would have a secret laboratory in the bowels of Sturmhalten Castle itself. Tarvek had already opened two of his personal labs to the Baron’s people, and they’d looked very much like this. It wasn’t unreasonable to think he would have more, nor that he would keep one in reserve for his own research.

Nor was it  _“unreasonable”_ for him to only reveal the conspiracy two months ago, when his research had produced a cure that made him into the Hero of Europa, carrying him toward the Lightning Throne on a flood of popular support. Never mind that it was thanks to the Wulfenbach Empire that there was much of a Europa left to cure, or the thousands who might have lived if Tarvek hadn’t been slimy even when he was eight years old. It was just _politics_.

Sturmvoraus was paranoid as well as sneaky, to the point of fastidiousness; there wasn’t a single page of notes to be seen. So Gil broke into the locked drawers along the undersides of the lab benches. They were even more sneakily trapped than the tunnel, but he’d spent half his time in Paris breaking into the laboratories of villainous sparks, albeit usually more explosively than stealthily, and he had had an additional fifteen years sneaking around Castle Wulfenbach to teach him how to pick a trick lock. Sleipnir might have been an even worse influence than Tarvek in that particular regard.

It was hard to imagine a worse influence than Sturmvoraus _now_ , though. Many of the notes were familiar - wasp anatomy and effication, observations on weasels…he wasn’t really supposed to have those, but it wasn’t a grave sin. But here was a much more detailed explanation of wasp chemical control than Gil had seen, and data on what looked like speech patterns, and redesigns-

“You really have the most remarkable knack for ruining everything.”

Gil was swinging his fist before Tarvek (leaning over his shoulder; how had he gotten there without Gil noticing?) finished speaking. Tarvek was faster, seizing Gil’s arm and using the momentum to throw him over his shoulder and halfway across the lab. 

…That was also unexpected. But Gil had suffered much worse. he bounced back up and grabbed the would-be Storm King around the waist before he could open another drawer.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a sneak,” he snarled, doing his best to put Tarvek in a headlock.

“I’m not the one who _stole a kingdom_ ,” Tarvek growled back, punctuating each word with a punch or kick. Gil blocked or returned most of the blows, but damn, when had the priss gotten so fast?

“I did not-” he began, before Tarvek got another (lucky) hold and threw him against the wall. This time, he saw stars. 

“I did not steal any kingdom,” he repeated, struggling back to his feet, taking an extra moment to avoid stepping on the shrieking weasel whose cage he’d inadvertently knocked over. “And neither did my father! The Storm King’s rule has been over for _centuries_ and _you’re_ just-”

Gil choked. Tarvek had gotten some sort of golden bauble out of the drawer, and he stared intently as Gil clutched at his throat and wheezed. It felt like it was drilling into the back of his throat, releasing some sort of numbing agent but sweet _lightning_  that was not meant to be punctured. He couldn’t move the muscles, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t really feel anything but the wrongness and numbness spreading back until it washed up into his brain like week-old coffee without the mediocre consolation of caffeine. It was the _opposite_ of caffeine, disjointing his thoughts and slowing his body. Everything felt blurred.

“Gil?”

Gil’s head was on Tarvek’s knees, on the cold stone floor. Sturmvoraus actually looked a little concerned. His voice rang oddly in Gil’s clouded brain.

Gil sat up and lunged for his former friend’s throat.

“Stop!”

He couldn’t move. No, he could - he dropped his arms experimentally, and they fell. But he couldn’t keep attacking. “You _wasped_ me.”

The accusation came out a little hoarser and more betrayed than he’d intended. He still felt like he was on the verge on passing out, except something wasn’t _letting_ him.

“Yes.” Tarvek frowned, any emotion other than vague annoyance chased from his features. “I would have preferred a genuine alliance, but clearly you are determined never to trust me, so this will have to do.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “It may actually be better in the long run. I expect it expedites the need to remove the Baron, but after that, consolidating power in my - ‘our’ - hands should be fairly simple.”

Gil found it within himself to snort derisively. “I’d like to see one of your Smoke Knights try to take on my father.”

“No, we’ve tried that,” Tarvek admitted. “I expect _you_ could get close to him, though.”

Gil’s mouth went dry.  _I couldn’t take him on, either_ was chased out of his mind by the entirely more terrifying, _Well, **actually** …_

“You can’t- you don’t dare. If there was any hint of foul play on my part, nobody would accept my authority.” He gagged on the words _and then I won’t be any use to you_  but they hung in the air unspoken. Gil felt sick with the possibilities.

“On the contrary,” said Tarvek, “most of the Empire would either not know or take it as a reasonable, if perhaps distasteful way for succession to proceed. Others wouldn’t care so long as he was dead, particularly if you granted them, and myself, more powers. The few really personal allies…who could actually cause trouble?”

Gil grit his teeth. Could he lunge for his throat again yet? No, that restriction, broad though it was, seemed to be lasting. Perhaps it was a matter of specifics—maybe a different means of attack would get around it?

Tarvek caught his punch again, looking almost exasperated. “Stop attacking me,” he ordered. “Answer the question, truthfully.”

Gil’s muscles slackened again, and his mouth started moving against his will. “Boris Dolokov. The Jägers. Von Pinn, if she suspected anything, would _certainly_ disapprove.” Tarvek winced at that, ha. And the jägers hated mind control, oh yes, that would be _quite_ a problem. **_Good._** “Out of the Castle, the Iron Sheik would be affronted”—but Z still spent half his time on the Castle, so he could be managed—“and the Master of Paris might take the excuse to cut off ties again. ”

Gil bit his tongue to stop talking, though he guessed the mere fact that he could do that meant he’d answered the question enough. Theo and Sleipnir would notice if he was acting unusual too, as would Wooster—though he didn’t really want the British government getting involved unless it was absolutely necessary. Actually, he wasn’t sure he wanted Theo and Sleipnir involved either; Sturmvoraus was obviously not above any dirty, deadly tactic. This was assuming he was intelligent enough to force Gil not to disclose the existence of these modified wasps, anyway, which was almost certain but not to be taken for granted _yet_ …Ugh, he still felt like he was thinking through bitter molasses. That had to wear off soon, right? Revenants (black fire, he was a _revenant_ now) all seemed to be fully capable.

Tarvek kneaded his forehead with a weary squint. “All right, this is clearly going to take more planning, and we’re both supposed to be awake in four hours for more cleaning out of the sewers.” They shared on a grimace on that one. “So…ground rules. You can’t communicate that you’re wasped, that’s built in, but also make no attempt to in any way suggest, directly or indirectly, that I have that technology, or that this lab exists. Do not do anything that would lead someone else to the discovery of either. Continue acting as you usually do, as if the last—” he checked a watch—“hour had never happened. Don’t try to find a cure for yourself, or in any way render yourself less than fit to serve me—that includes any physical or psychic injury, and death. Don’t get anyone else to do these things for or to you. Again, don’t attack, injure, or in any way harm me, nor arrange by any means for me to be attacked or harmed. In general, serve my interests to the best of your ability while maintaining the public image—that is, to everyone other than myself—of not being any different than you were an hour ago.”

He rattled the orders off like he’d been planning this moment for years. like he’d practiced them in front of a mirror. Gil dugs his nails into his palms as the compulsions sank their hooks into what felt like every cell in his body. He used to assume Lucrezia, when she was still anonymously dropping rocks and hive engines on every spark in Europa, had been called “the Other” because it was just suitably vague and menacing. Now he wondered if the term hadn’t been coined by a hidden revenant, dreadfully aware every second of the overwhelming foreign _presence_ in their mind. There was, almost, a curiosity as to what would happen if one were to just give in to that presence, surrender all sense of self but acquiescence.

 _Geisterdamen_. Gil shuddered.

“I’m going to see you hung for this,” he promised. “Before the entire Empire. And drawn and quartered, and all your holdings and execrable experiments burned.”

“Hanged,” Sturmvoraus corrected absently. He stood and pulled Gil up after him, a mad light in his eyes. “And no, you won’t. You’re going to help me rebuild Europa under a new Storm Rule, safer and richer and better than it’s ever been before!”

And he _was_ , that was the worst part. Gil could fight it all he liked but he could also feel the resigned certainty seeping through him like cold water through wet tissue, utterly pervading and inescapable. He was going to do exactly what this priggish, hypocritical, two-faced _snake_ of a Storm King said.


End file.
